Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, said in an interview that the documents Matt Drudge posted this afternoon–and removed several hours later without explanation–could have only come from the Army.

Mr. Foer said he called TNR’s contact there, Major Kirk Luedeke, as soon as the documents appeared on Drudge’s Web site. According to Mr. Foer, Major Luedeke told him that the Army was “investigating the source of the leak,” though they did not explicitly take responsibility for it.

“It’s maddening to see the Army selectively leak to the Drudge Report things that we’ve been trying to obtain from them through Freedom of Information Act requests,” Mr. Foer said. “This fits a pattern in this case where the army has leaked a lot of stuff to right wing blogs.”

Mr. Foer said TNR had been trying since July to get access to some of the documents Mr. Drudge posted, but that the Army had not cooperated.

Update 6:50pm Eastern. Franklin Foer comes out from under his desk to whine to the NY Observer about the transcripts being leaked. All of this damning transcript evidence of TNR’s attempts to cover up, and what does Foer do? He attacks the military again (emphasis mine)

To the caught drooling Malkin, the facts are the same thing as an attack. I looked at a couple of on-line dictionaries that they do not concur.The facts are truly a liberal bias. TNR is correct on this aspect of the Beauchamp bruhaha if nothing else: certain military personnel have provided leaks, unsubstantiated leaks at that, to war cheerleaders like the Weekly Standard while also withholding documentation from TNR who has filed a Freedom of Information request that hasn’t been complied with. Again, and this part is getting tiresome. Beauchamp might be completely in the wrong, maybe not, but no one has produced proof that Scott is a complete liar as the Right claims. John Cole reiterates what I’ve suggested before. That Beauchamp just wants the story to go away and obviously with the The Right-wing Stalker Brigade on his back that would be understandable, More Beauchamp

I would tell you what I thought of the leaked documents if the links at Drudge worked. From Kevin’s snippet, it appears that the latest transcript show that Beauchamp basically told everyone to piss off, that he just wanted everything to go away. Or, precisely what anyone with a brain would have predicted he would do (note the date I wrote that- 10 September) once the nutters had the brass jumping down his throat.

You’re a soldier in Iraq under fire (something that Malkin and the usual cadre of chickenhawks wouldn’t understand) you try your hand at a little first person journalism and you do get a few things wrong. Then unlike the Right who suffers from a terminal lack of humility you admit you screwed up, then the brass decides to grill your ass. Within this bubble of who said what when there are a couple of things missing from the intense rabidness on the Right, a little humility and proportion. They’re incredibly paranoid that somehow the Beauchamp story will tarnish the bright shiny picture that try to paint of Iraq and the worse president in American history. Whatever the end of the story on TNR and Beauchamp ends up it doesn’t change how badly the Right has behaved the last forty years, the last ten in particular and the river of lies they rode to power. The Beuachamp story regardless of how it ends does not compensate America for all the damage that the Right has done, how they have twisted and mangled genuine values and patriotism. No doubt they will continue to turn like little worms with these relatively minor Beauchamp-like flare ups , pissing and whining from under the bleachers, but that is where the sweep of public opinion has put them and is where they are going to stay. Let me quote Balloon Juice again from a reply he made to one of his commenters,

Every post I wrote about this was one mocking the nutters for freaking out about this. Never once did I say that Beauchamp’s stories were true. What I mocked was the notion that they were disproven with assertions that “soldiers don’t mock people” or sand table exercises with scale models of Bradley’s.

The Right just doesn’t get it. Over three thousand soldiers are dead, tens of thousands wounded maimed or crippled. Iraq is a desert hell hole, Bin Laden is chuckling in a cave somewhere in Pakistan, the total bill for Afghanistan and Iraq is over the two trillion dollars mark. The Right jumps up and down waving their tired little arms saying please please America don’t think about what is important, think about Scott Beauchamp...please please we beg you, the Beauchamp story is the biggest most important story since Hillary gave her cat to a friend.

Malkin says that her fellow ideologues at The National Review don’t get. It is pretty simple. M’s Lopez read what Drudge made available. It wasn’t the smoking gun the right-wing bloggers all say it is. What’s that called when someone is so bent on revenge that they sell out their own credibility.

Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda ~ Hannah Arendt